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Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, author of Body's Many Cries for Water
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27 Oct 2018, 05:02

9

00:00

A

B

C

D

E

Difficulty:

95% (hard)

Question Stats:

32%(01:06) correct 68%(01:17) wrong based on 257 sessions

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Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, author of Body's Many Cries for Water, claims he discovered the medicinal value of water when he served in prison by treating inmates with water when medication was not available.

A. claims he discovered the medicinal value of water when he served in prison by treating inmates with water

B. claimed to discover the medicinal value of water by treating inmates with water while he served in prison

C. claims to have discovered the medicinal value of water in prison, when he served by treating inmates with water

D. claimed he discovered the medicinal value of water in prison by treating the inmates with water

E. claimed in prison to have discovered the medicinal value of water by treating inmates with water

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Although the meaning of this sentence seems clear, modifier placement is of great importance. The placement of "by treating inmates with water" makes A sound like this was the way Batmanghelidj served in prison; C has the same problem (and the avoidable repetition of "when" clauses in the following non-underlined part). E is redundant, and its placement of "in prison" makes it seem to modify "claimed" rather than "discovered". B has the ideal modifier equilibrium, changing "served in prison" to the simpler and less problematic "in prison", but unfortunately "claimed to discover" is unidiomatic. This leaves D, which expresses the sentence's core information without ambiguity.

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Although the meaning of this sentence seems clear, modifier placement is of great importance. The placement of "by treating inmates with water" makes A sound like this was the way Batmanghelidj served in prison; C has the same problem (and the avoidable repetition of "when" clauses in the following non-underlined part). E is redundant, and its placement of "in prison" makes it seem to modify "claimed" rather than "discovered". B has the ideal modifier equilibrium, changing "served in prison" to the simpler and less problematic "in prison", but unfortunately "claimed to discover" is unidiomatic. This leaves D, which expresses the sentence's core information without ambiguity.

Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, author of Body's Many Cries for Water
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28 Oct 2018, 07:08

GMATNinjaSir, could you please tell me about this question?In this amazing forum, I came across few questions in which we preferred meaning over sentence construction. Here in this particular question, there is no connector between the two independent clauses. Can we expect this kind of question in official GMAT?If possible kindly post some official questions in which we prefer meaning over sentence construction. Thanks:)

Re: Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, author of Body's Many Cries for Water
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29 Oct 2018, 04:58

Still don't get it, why should I assume he didn't claim IN prison? The sentence still makes logical sense. Maybe he was an a super curious inmate who wanted to kill time - get my point? Where's the grammatical error? GMATNinja HELP????

Re: Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, author of Body's Many Cries for Water
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30 Oct 2018, 23:35

hibobotamuss wrote:

Still don't get it, why should I assume he didn't claim IN prison? The sentence still makes logical sense. Maybe he was an a super curious inmate who wanted to kill time - get my point? Where's the grammatical error?

Asserting that the claim occurred in prison is new information that was not supplied in the original text. It is not true to the original statement.

Re: Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, author of Body's Many Cries for Water
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31 Oct 2018, 00:17

1

Careful there, Snrdawgsheet. There's no such thing as an "original" in SC. Either the sentence is right or it's wrong. However, we do get to compare all five choices in order to determine the author's likely intent. In this case, since four of the choices convey a different meaning than E, and there's nothing wrong with that other meaning (in fact, it makes more sense than E), we should go with the "consensus" meaning.

Having said that, I think the GMAT would still give us another reason to reject E.
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